opinion

While Women's History Month is indeed a time to look back and celebrate those who have brought our society forward, it is also a time to push for the advancement of women today. Grand Valley State University is one institution that elected to do just that when selecting Philomena Mantella as the next president of GVSU, the first woman president of the university.
The advancement of women has felt so strong in the past year, with the appointment of Mantella and the slew of women taking seats in Congress and positions of power across the country. It appears that not just the future but the present is in-fact, female.

Each day, on average, 88 lives are saved by an organ transplant in the United States; but 22 people die each day waiting for a transplant that never comes, according to organdonor.gov. A new person is added to the wait list every 10 minutes. The need for organ transplants rapidly outpaces the rate of donor registrations. Many health organizations turn to college campuses for their outreach and awareness projects because college-aged students are generally the best organ donor candidates, so it's up to us to take the simple steps that could save lives.

When a person decides to further their education and pursue a degree, the availability of credible educational resources is just as important as which institution and which program they select. A well-organized and well-staffed library is arguably the single most important tool any student or scholar could ever utilize. That being said, Grand Valley State University’s lack of $800,000 to supplement the University Libraries budget by January 2020 would be counterproductive as it pertains to giving students and instructors the access they need to subscription-based academic journals and other valuable academic resources.

While the university does not require vaccinations, just as Michigan's 12 other universities do not, they do recommend them. In fact, GVSU openly encourages the following vaccines: influenza, MMR, meningitis, meningitis B, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, varicella, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, HPV, pneumococcal and polio.
It is not enough, however, for a university to just ask this of their community. Parents and individuals across the country must take the timely precautions to vaccinate themselves and their children, in the case of those who can.

Apparently having your parents fund a new campus library isn’t enough to get you admitted to the top schools in the country anymore, as has already swept social media. Eight universities, including Stanford and Yale, have been definitively implicated in an admissions bribery scandal. 50 people have been charged and 30 arrested for involvement in what the U.S. Department of Justice is calling a nationwide conspiracy between rich parents, athletic coaches, a university athletics director and SAT and ACT exam administrators.

The most difficult part was admitting I had a problem. I was a high-achieving student in high school, and my first semester in college I did really well.
But then slowly I began to slip. I started skipping class, not doing my homework and failing tests. There were times I didn’t leave my room for days. My grades started to drop as I was developing this depression, which severely worsened it.

Life after graduating can be weird, as many people in their early 20s can attest to. Going from taking classes, living with friends, partying and working when you can to moving to a different city, working full time and trying to figure out taxes can be tough, to say the least.
After graduating with a journalism degree from GVSU and two years of working as a reporter, I found myself wanting more. I spent a lot of time (probably too much) dreaming of running away to Europe and going on the ever-so-cliche trip to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

College is an intense roller coaster that stops for no one and if you don’t care for yourself in the correct and most fulfilling ways then you will never be able to finish the ride. The practice of self-care has been thrown around a lot these days, especially in the teens to twenties range. What I have noticed is that there are two ways people react when they hear self-care: brush it off like you are too good for it and that you don’t need it or unleash your love for it and bombard the unlucky victim with all of your at-home remedies, tips and tricks. Whichever side you stray toward, everyone takes care of themselves in some way or another. Even the person that states that they are too good for it without a doubt throws their shoes off after a long day, pours themselves a cup of ice cold lemonade and watches the sun go down behind some peaceful rolling hills… or maybe something similar.

Captain Marvel is Marvel Studios’ latest release, a truly unique movie about a photon-blasting superhero from outer space who fights aliens and teams up with Samuel L. Jackson. The film stars Room’s Brie Larson as the titular Captain Marvel, the aforementioned Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury (but with two eyes this time), and Jude Law. You should go see it for two reasons.